A Shout Out to Many: Thanks and Farewell to My Library Colleagues

As you may have read earlier this year, Harvard offered an early retirement package to many Library employees, and approximately 65 staff members took it. Now that the 1st of July is rapidly approaching (the date many will retire), reality is sinking in, and I’m realizing I’m about to lose a great many valued colleagues. I haven’t been able to find an exhaustive list of who is retiring, but I put together a list of names I knew about, along with names of folks who I know have moved on — or are moving on ‚ to jobs beyond Harvard, and when I took a look at it, I was pretty overwhelmed by the departures.

I can’t do an individual shout out to each, so I’m using this forum to say, Thank you! and All good wishes! and You will be missed! to these colleagues, with many of whom I’ve worked directly, and who have earned my respect, over the years. I’ve included their years of Harvard service when I knew it:

Chris Allen, Information Research Specialist, Baker Library, Harvard Business School, 29.5 years of service

In addition, these colleagues have left or are leaving to take new jobs beyond Harvard:

Tom Bruno, Head of Resource Sharing for the College Library, 14 years of service, is leaving Harvard to become Associate Director for Resource Sharing and Reserves at Yale University

Mark Farrar, Assistant Director for Systems Management and Infrastructure for the College Library, 16.5 years of service, is leaving Harvard to become the Information and Communications Technology Manager at the Rotterdam School of Management in the Netherlands

Sebastian Hierl, Librarian for Western Europe, Widener Library, Harvard College Library, 7 years of service, is leaving Harvard to become the Director of the Library at the American Academy in Rome

Tom Horrocks, Associate Librarian for Collections at Houghton Library, Harvard College Library, 15 years of service, is leaving Harvard to become the Director of the John Hay Library at Brown University

Karen Storin Linitz, Head of Anglo-American Reference Services at the Law School Library, left Harvard to become the Director of Academic Technology and Innovation at Emmanuel College

Cheryl MacGrath, Head of Widener Library Access Services, 5 years of service, left Harvard to become the Director of the MacPháidín Library at Stonehill College

John Palfrey, Harvard Law School’s Henry N. Ess III Professor of Law and vice-dean of Library and Information Resource, is leaving Harvard to become Head of School at Phillips Academy Andover

Alison Scott, Charles Warren Bibliographer for American History, Widener Library, Harvard College Library, 12 years of service, left Harvard to become Head of Collection Development at George Washington University

Brad Schaffner, Head of the Slavic Division, Widener Library, Harvard College Library,8 years of service, is leaving Harvard to become College Librarian at Carleton College

Stephen Wiles, Senior Librarian for Foreign, International, and Comparative Law at the Law School Library, 22 years of service, left Harvard to become the Assistant Director for Content Management at L.L.M.C. in Hawaii

Heartfelt thanks to you all.
Cheryl

P.S. ‚ if I’ve left out names it was from ignorance; if any colleagues read this and know of those I’ve left out, please do e-mail me at: claguard@fas.harvard.edu and I’ll update the list. Many thanks, C.

Cheryl LaGuardia always wanted to be a librarian, and has been one for more years than she's going to admit. She cracked open her first CPU to install a CD-ROM card in the mid-1980's, pioneered e-resource reviewing for Library Journal in the early 90's (picture calico bonnets and prairie schooners on the web...), won the Louis Shores / Oryx Press Award for Professional Reviewing, and has been working for truth, justice, and better electronic library resources ever since. Reach her at claguard@fas.harvard.edu, where she's a Research Librarian at Harvard University.

Comments

Thanks for writing, Beata. I’ve been updating the list throughout the day (just added five more names) so you may want to go back in and take a look. And while I’m at it: YOU are MISSED, too!
Best wishes,
Cheryl

Cheryl, I await the day when those who have done this will hold their heads and ask, “What have we done?!”

Let me add my name to those responders above who send their best wishes to those who are departing. Their long years of service have helped to make this the greatest university library in the world.
As retirees, you will receive an invitation from the Harvard University Retirees Association to join nearly 1200 of your University colleagues.
Malcolm Hamilton, 37 years a Harvard librarian, now President of HURA

Thanks, Cheryl, and Cheers to Tozzer Library listees: Greg, Marcia, Monica and Ralph. I took early retirement in 2009, but had the opportunity to come back for the past 6 months and work at my old library. I’m helping Tozzer with their transition-within-a-transition as the staff prepares a large portion of the collection for permanent/temporary storage at HD in response to a building renovation project. You won’t find a gamer bunch of library workers than my colleagues! I must re-retire, for now, and join the new retirees in the bittersweet experience of loss and cherished memories.

Thanks, Cheryl! Wow, what a list of talent and institutional knowledge. I do and will miss so many of these folks. On a brighter note, life after Harvard can be delightful. Good luck to everyone… Come visit any time!

I think it would be pretty heartbreaking to walk into Lamont now. Even after being gone from Harvard for 14 years, it’s amazing how many folks I still know on this list. Thank you so much for posting it, Cheryl. There will never be another conservator like Doris Freitag. She’s one of the reasons I’m a librarian today. Told my parents I would heal broken books instead of becoming a doctor and healing broken people. (But then I got swept up in the excitement of acquisitions work and stayed there instead.) Mary Beth Clack – serials will never be the same! Russ Pollard was there for the early years of the Acquisitions Roundtable (which I’m not sure even exists any more…) And to see the curating and cataloging talent leaving the many special collections – teh Botanicals, Yenching, Teddy Roosevent, Isham, Schlesinger. Welcome to well-deserved retirement after so many years of service. But you will all be missed so much, not just by Harvard, but by the greater academic library community as well.

Cheryl, thank you, this is just stunning to read. Like Carrie I took the pkg in 2009. I wanted to move to raise my daughter near family, but I also worried that a large part of my job would be completed in a few years and I doubted that my position would survive reorganization. I was devastated this spring when I realized I would not get back to the Law Library before these retirements. It’s not just sentimentality over the passing of an era, but a lack of trust in the structure that is being built of our departures.